UK Energy Bill: A Trojan Horse

The draft Energy Bill, due to go before Parliament some time over the next 12 months, is the British government's opportunity to sort out a number of problems:

• How to keep the lights on when so many power stations are coming to the end of their useful lives.

• How to meet the UK's legal obligations on carbon emissions and help meet the challenge of climate change.

• How to get energy security for the country (i.e. So we're not dependent on foreign energy).

• How to stabilise energy prices when so many people are already in fuel poverty, and fuel prices are going nuts (Nearly 20% increase last year).

All big problems, worthy of a well thought out bill you might think. A once-in-a-generation chance for a BIG solution, and renewables could play a significant role in that solution.

Sadly, it's the way of our current government to think small.

You'd expect something in the bill about energy efficiency, which would be the cheapest and fastest way to reduce household bills, emissions, and the number of new power stations required. But there's nothing.

Maybe they're hoping the much delayed and highly criticised 'Green Deal' will do that for them when (if?) it finally comes out. That'll be the scheme that, by the government's own admission, will cut the number of loft insulations being carried out from the current rate of 800,000 a year to just 100,000. Hardly inspiring.

Even more worrying is this: The bill itself says that, to reach it's legal commitment to cut 80% of the nation's CO2 emissions by 2050, it's electricity generating plants will need to be largely de-carbonised by 2030. That means our electric must be producing no more, on average, than 50 grams of CO2 emissions per kW hour. However, the bill sets a limit on new power stations of 450g per kWh! 9 times the required level.

This might be okay if you balance the high output stations with a lot of low emmision ones but there's nothing in the bill to suggest that's the aim. Instead, the aim seems to be to build a few nuclear stations and a lot of gas powered stations (That currently create a little under 400g per kWh).

You might expect the government to insist on carbon capture and storage (CCS) on all new builds to reduce the difference but they seem to have all but given up on CCS, so no such insistence is made.

Clearly, the government have given up on emission targets.

Further proof of this can be found in the bill's attitude to coal fired power stations. These are the worst emitters of all and far exceed the bill's limit 450g per kWh, so you might expect them to be prohibited. No chance. You see, even though the govt. don't believe in CCS, the bill says that new coal stations can be built if the owners say that they will "demonstrate" CCS on the plant at some stage in it's life. It doesn't have to be successful or last for any length of time, it just has be "demonstrated". What a cop out!

So that's the trojan horse: A government that claims to be the "greenest ever" presents us with an energy bill that conceals the inevitable demise of the UK's emission commitments. They should hang their heads in shame.

To paraphrase an old saying: Beware of conservatives bearing energy bills.

More here.